Where Your Heart Is...
Notes
Transcript
There is a term used in popular culture today called adulting. This term applies to any responsibility of being an adult. Things like laundry, taking out the trash, getting the oil changed in your car, and paying bills. When I was a substitute teacher, I always asked the juniors and seniors in high school how prepared they felt to enter the real world. Most of them felt unprepared. The questions they had the most were how taxes worked and how to manage finances. The more responsibilities we have, the more difficult it is to manage them. We are going to talk about that today.
We are taking a turn today in the sermon on the mount. The section where he contrasts the beliefs and practices of religious leaders to his followers has ended. Now, we transition to more practical matters. Jesus is going to remind his followers to set their sights on the things of God, not on the things of this world.
As followers of Jesus, we must have a heavenly mindset that governs all our affairs.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
“But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal;
for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
“The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.
“But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
Jesus addresses an issue we can all relate to: materialism. It is defined as a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values. Materialism is the focus on the accumulation of things as a means to satisfaction. In ancient Israel, there was a prevailing belief that material blessing was a sign of God’s favor. Therefore, if you were rich, you were blessed by God. If you were poor, God was cursing you. There is some truth to that as it pertains to the blessings and curses of following God’s covenant. But just because you were poor doesn’t mean you were under God’s judgment, and just because you were rich did not mean you always had God’s favor. What Jesus is emphasizing is the kind of investments you should make.
Followers of Jesus should seek to make an eternal impact with their lives by focusing on three things:
Invest in the eternal, not the temporal.
Invest in the eternal, not the temporal.
We know that we are not going to last forever. We know the things we create are not going to last forever. The investments we make while on this earth are not going to last forever. Yet, we long for eternity. Revelation 21:1-4 says,
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them,
and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
One day everything we see will come to an end only to be replaced by something far greater where God and man will reside together forever. We know that nothing on this earth lasts forever. Therefore, as part of a heavenly mindset, we should focus on making investments that are eternal, not temporal.
What Jesus is not saying is that it is wrong for you to have a 401K, a pension, or some sort of retirement plan for when you can no longer work. The book of Proverbs is filled with wisdom for future financial planning. This is also not saying that we must take vows of poverty and cannot have nice things. What it is saying is that one should be careful about the things he does accumulate. The more you have, the more you stand to lose. The question is whether you can stand to lose what you have.
The greatest investments you will ever make are not in stock portfolios, real estate, precious metals, or other tangible things. The greatest investment you will ever make is the intentional investment of your life into other people. I promise you that when your funeral comes, no one will say, “Wow, can you believe the retirement plan that guy had?” or, “Can you believe the amount of stuff they collected?” When you die, someone is going to have to go through everything you own and decide what to do with it. When that day comes, they are not going to care about the stuff. They are just going to want you. Things don’t last forever, but you will.
In his book Bold Moves, Craig Etheredge, Pastor of First Baptist Church in Colleyville (now Cross Creek Church), writes,
As I look back over the years of my ministry, my greatest source of joy hasn’t come from accomplishing a certain goal or constructing a building. My joy is in the people I personally invested my life into and watched them continue to walk with God and make disciples.
This is what Paul meant when he said in 1 Thess. 2:19-20
For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming?
For you are our glory and joy.
Your treasures on earth will rot and decay. Your treasures in heaven will not. But the treasures in heaven are not things. They are people. What if the treasures in heaven are the people you personally invested in to walk with God? What if the day you stand before Christ, there are people standing behind you who you personally shared the gospel with? What if the treasures you store up in heaven are the people you invested your life into while you were here? Who would be standing there?
Fix your eyes on heaven.
Fix your eyes on heaven.
Verses 22 and 23 refer to the eye as the lamp of the body. What is fascinating to me is that the audience probably had no idea how the human eye worked. Aristotle theorized that the human eye shone light out, but we all know now that the eye receives light, allowing us to see. What does Jesus mean by this? How is our whole body full of light or darkness?
In the previous verse, Jesus said that where one’s treasure is, his heart will be also. We understand the heart to be the emotive center of our being. When you tell someone you love them, you don’t say, “I love you with all my brain,” right? Of course not. The brain is thought of the thinking part of us, the one that handles rational thought. When you are asked a complex question, you don’t respond by saying, “Let me feel about that for a minute,” do you? No. You think about it. So where our treasure is, our affections follow. But it is our eyes that say to our hearts something is desirable, which stirs the affections of our hearts.
Light and darkness is a common theme to distinguish between good and evil. Light represents everything that is good. Darkness represents anything that is evil. Jesus is using a figure of speech known as a synecdoche. A synecdoche substitutes a part of something for the whole. In this instance, the eye is indicative of the whole body. What the eye sees, the body wants. The body is affected by the eye. Where the heart is the center of our affections, the eyes fixate on what the heart wants. So if your eye is healthy, you will fixate on healthy things. If your eye is not healthy, you will fixate on unhealthy things.
What you set your eyes to will feed your heart’s desires. If we go back to the temptation in the garden of Eden, we see that temptation began with what Eve saw.
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
She had already bought into the lie that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make her like God. By embracing the lie, her affections shifted. The eye saw based on a false promise. The heart desired what the eyes saw. Jesus came and died so we might have our sight and our affections restored.
Heavenly investments require that that we fix our eyes on heavenly things. Do you have a vision for the future that includes God and his purposes? Are you envisioning a future where God receives glory, honor, and praise for the work done in your life? Or are you envisioning a future where God merely blesses your plans? You were made for so much more than asking God to get you through life. You are called to impact eternity with the life you live here on earth. Is that your vision, or do you simply want to get through life as comfortably as possible? Fix your eyes on heaven and you will make heavenly investments.
Choose your master.
Choose your master.
The final verse sums it all up. No one can serve two masters. One will always win. The question is which one will it be? We become slaves to what we give ourselves to. You and I are created beings. We are not the Creator. We are subjects. We are not the king. We will always be enslaved to something. The irony is that if we give ourselves over to God and his purposes, then we will find freedom. Jesus says in Matt. 16:24-25
Matthew 16:24–25 (NASB95)
“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
If you give yourself to the pursuit of money, it will never be enough. You will begin to do terrible things in service to it. If you pursue the path of human achievement, you may receive the praise of men, but miss out on the praise of your Father in heaven. If you throw yourself into your work, you will find success, but you can’t take it with you when you are gone.
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?
Our mission is to help people find forever family through Christ-centered relationships. The only thing that is going to last forever is the investments you make in the kingdom. Everything else will decay and burn up.
We do our children’s program to invest our lives into those kids. We run a youth ministry to invest our lives into teenagers. Very soon we need someone to step up and help pour their life into preschoolers. Who are you personally investing your life into in this church? Who are you personally investing your life into in our community? Who has God placed within your sphere of influence? Remember to choose eternal investments over temporal ones by fixing your eyes on heaven and remembering who your master is. Where our treasure is, your heart will be also. Where is your heart today?